Archive for the Divine

I bought this birthday card for a friend. It showed a woman at her desk throwing her paperwork up in the air. The saying, “Less paper work, more fun.” Many of the dotcoms are trying this with game rooms, but they are quite competitive places, these game rooms. They have rollerblading hallways, bike trails, all sorts of yoga and nap rooms, so someone got the message that more play brings better work. Now we are talking about a very task-oriented, highly motivated, competitive group of “huemans.” Then there was last nite when I saw a quote from a spiritual teacher saying (and I’m paraphrasing): If you changed your work-to-play ratio from 70% work and 30% play to just the opposite, 30% work and 70% play, you would have the happiness you are chasing.

What I got from this is not to stop work but to stop making your life all work and instead “make it work.” We say: I am working on this, working out, working towards this goal, and working hard to make this happen. We never say, I’m playing at seeing the gift in this; I’m playing with my business; I’m playing out; I’m playing with this goal so I will understand it from all sides. Yet, in spite of this, every mystic leaves his students for time to play.

Play with children. Play with the Divine through poetry. Get the play of life and revel in it. Life is inviting you to play with it—to play inside of the easy and the challenges. Play is a way of conceiving and perceiving things.

How can you make your life more about play? How can you be playful and still meet the challenges? How can you not let people run all over you, yet not get your tail, your heart, your head, and your soul in knots over what happened or what someone said or did to you? Take the “you” out of those quotients. It is never about you. Truly, you are losing energy and joy when you react to what others are doing.

I’m going to share a personal story with you. Actually it’s 2 stories.

Story #1

I work longs hours often but I truly love all I do. I also take all sorts of breaks. The other day, Sheru came in and said, “You are always at your computer. I couldn’t do that. Two hours is my max.” I said, “Since you left 2 hours ago, I did yoga, ate dinner, went to the 99cents Only Store (Oh, here’s a super tip. 8pm is the perfect time to breeze in and out), now I am back at my computer.” All day I take yoga breaks, work with clients on the phone while I walk through my garden and pull weeds. I think much better when I am moving. It seems to allow things to come through me better. Then I sometimes make my desk so I can stand up, sometimes I sit down. I don’t have a flat back side yet so I’m assuming it is working or playing out well. How do you structure your workday so there is fun, delight, play, yoga, and energy involved? I worked long days last week so I could do something I really really love—go to the beach; not just any beach, but really clean water. Laguna, ahhh.

Story #2

I went to the beach and invited my friend Allana to meet me there. She did, and we had a wonderful couple of hours connecting on how consciousness is unfolding in our lives and businesses. It was delightful. She was delightful. She brought watermelon, and I brought an entire vegan spread of tahini dip with celery, cucumbers, tomatoes, an avocado for each of us, and a knife and fork. For desert, there was chocolate coconut milk that I had put in the freezer and it still had little ice chunks in it. Delightful. She had never had this treat. I had only found it at a gas station in Phoenix when I went to gather Pritham’s things. I was deeply in need of something yummy. It was the perfect thing. I had 1 bottle of this every day. Allana felt the same way and we literally giggled with delight. We were like little children. We felt we had discovered the adult version of chocolate milk (or chocolate milkshake).

After Allana left, I snorkeled in this very cold, clear water. It was magical. I had swum there often but never snorkeled. Grasses and seaweed all dancing; great schools of 10- to12-inch green fish; a big orange fish doing solo dances; a 3- to 4-foot, (yes, that’s in feet) black and brown fish; an entire valley of purple sea anemonesl—just one delight after another. I was truly ecstatic.

Then, the Divine tested my ecstasy as I inched home. Never take the 5 if you can help it. That’s even worse than the 405 drive—well, maybe not, but on that day, it was. I went to Gurudwara (our temple) that night and I really looked forward to this wonderful Kirtan group. It was the 8th month, exactly, after Pritham left her body. They were… how do I say it… kindly very loud and off-key. I moved outside and found that I could meditate beyond the loudness and get into the sound current of the words and let that uplift my soul. I got to play with the sound beneath the sound current.

How are you going to practice to play when it doesn’t seem like a play situation? How are you going to invite more play into your life? Please connect and tell me. Play with the Divine in each moment. All this is practice to do just that.

Wait till the Woman’s Retreat. We will be playing and getting the essence of your recharged.

Time is the earth unfolding. It is an agreement of guidelines for the earth interactions. I always remember how time-challenged Pritham was. She had her own time/clock and if she could help it she was staying true to that.

I remember when Beverly Hills High school called me and said Pritham was late for every class even though she was on campus. Could I help them get her to class on time? I laughed—not the answer they were expecting. I shared what my mornings were like, getting her out of the house so her brother and cousin wouldn’t always be late for school. They called me back a few days later and shared this story: “We called Pritham in and told her that we would dock her a full grade every time she was late for a class and her response was, ‘Do whatever you have to do.’” They were freaked out and didn’t know what to do.

What’s the lesson there? Don’t ever give threats you can’t keep. Don’t threaten people with things they aren’t afraid of. Time is somewhat agreed upon by most of us. It keeps you grounded and on track. You look at your calendars to see what time you have appointments, to schedule your days, to try and separate the various aspects of your lives.

Space. It is the ether part of our lives. Do you schedule time to be in space? They say spacing out is very necessary for brain function—one of the top 5 things. We have curiosity, humor, deep sleep, spacing out, and fearless action. Even more nourishing than spacing out is meditation. One does not exclude the other. They both create space. Aren’t you always asking for more space in your life? You want more space to live in, more physical space, more space in relationships, etc., but what you really want is the spaciousness within yourself—that vastness that allows you to realize you are on the earth but of the ether. We need both aspects to filter through your “I am; your “I am-ness.”

Think of all the space movies and operas on television. These reflect the longing to know and be more connected to the vastness that is the universe; the known and unknown. We want to know the unknown, but mostly we look to others to tell us what is out there. Go there yourself and beyond.

Meditation/Chanting is truly there to take you into the spheres beyond time and space. First, you must go into the spaciousness of space before you can go beyond it.

The best way to get vast and connected is to:

Have the desire to know and befriend the unknown

Take the time each day to grow those muscles by spending time meditating

Chant and play with the Essence of the Divine.

Look at that percentage of your day you devote to your vastness.

This will feed the “I am-ness” of you. Then, you get time and space to serve you. Both of these aspects have vastness. Time is horizontal and space is vertical in their directions of vastness. When you feel fear, try this mudra. It will reconnect you to the vast essence of you.

Fold your ring (Sun) finger and your middle (Saturn) finger into your palm and press them down with your thumb. Do this on both hands, allowing the first finger (Jupiter) and the last finger (Mercury) to extend out, straight. Breathe long and deep. This will take you deep quickly. Do this often, 3-5 times each day for 40 days and then share what it has done for you.

Funny how something small can trigger amazing results. Some little misplaced letter or quotient can shift the way we see or think of things. I am a truly horrid or creative speller depending on how you think of misspelled words. One teacher in high school told me I was an amazing writer but couldn’t spell dog the same way twice. I shrugged and thought why it seemed so boring to do so. Didn’t people know what you meant? Wasn’t it more interesting to have to stretch a little to unravel the word? It let the sentence sink in a little more deeply. So when I was spelling “blog” today, “clog” came out and I knew there was a message for me in there. What is clogged in our lives, in your life right now, is what keeps things from running well. It keeps things stuck. Have you looked at your plumbing, both figuratively and physically, in any detail recently?

If your plumbing in your home is backed up, we don’t wait days or weeks or months to call a plumber. We are right on it as needed. Yet when our own internal plumbing gets backed up we can go for days without evacuating and think little of it. We can go around with the same small stale thoughts that keep us constricted and not only hang on to them but defend them with our lives.

That is why we have a teacher. That is why we have a chance to seek the wisdom of someone who can see us more clearly than we can see ourselves. That is why we seek out a great detox program. Detoxing the body will help detox the mind but there is nothing like detoxing the body, the mind and the soul altogether. This is always the Spiritual path—to let go of the past that we have so identified with so we can embrace the Divine naked, alive and holding no separateness. The I am-ness comes when we are clear, not congested. So the question now is: What are you doing to clear out?

Several points you can easily do.

Pick one room, then one place in the room and start clearing and cleaning it—a desk, drawer, or closet or under your bed. You chose.

Decide one day each week you are going to do only veggie juice from sunrise to sunset or choose 1 week during the summer to do just veggie juice.

You can have this amazing program for 1/3 what it usually costs. WHY? Because I so want you to be unclogged, unburdened, and unafraid to live YOUR priceless life. Everything I create is to elevate and support you to living a more juicy, loving elevated life so you can do what you came here for—to merge into the Essence of the Divine; to live this life unburdened by fear and doubt which steal our souls. Wahe Guru love and light to you.

And You? We all want other people to care about us. We all want others to recognize what we have done or are doing for them. We have very Earth plane desires to be recognized, loved, heard, and yet what are our deepest desires? Just the opposite. How can I love more? How can I see both the seen and the unseen more clearly? How can I recognize the greatness and neurosis in others and be attached to either?

This is the very definition of a great life. One where you see the other as the Divine. Where you treat them as such. Yet this is challenging because we have our wants and our desires. We have our thoughts on how things should be and how they should be said and how we want them to feel. All good but limiting. The real question is how often are we willing to get out of our own way to see things in a great depth from a more vast perspective? Then the real question is how can we do this?

The fastest way I know is breath. The fastest way I know is breath mixed with motion and chants. To change the state but even more than change it is about draining the dead energy out that creates the disconnect and bring in the vastness of breath that creates clarity of mind. Our clarity of mind is directly connected to our breath. Want a stale upset mind just make your breath shallow and you to shall be so. The reverse is also true and much yummier state to live in.

Please give yourself 5 mins to try this and see what happens. There is more where this came from. This is part of my Mental Clarity DVD. Use it and see the greatness of you and those around you. Manage yourself so you can manage others with grace and vision.

What’s new? What’s up? What’s cooking? Things we have all been asked and sometimes we have lots to say and other times we want to say, nothing. Simple nothing. Really when you are in the midst of everything and trying to distill what is what the last things you want is to have someone ask you that question. So just look at them or through them and say. Truly everything and just as truly nothing.

When we are in these places where the unknown collides into the known and we feel shattered, or at least disbursed, this is not a time where we feel confident and balanced. It is not meant for that. It is meant to be a time of great learning of great experiencing. To fall apart and let God reassemble us. That time is now on the planet. Don’t try to hold yourself together. Really allow the Divine to have her way with you. Karta Purka God is the doer and she doesn’t have to consult you on what she/he is doing.

When we lose the fact or belief that we are the doer it is chaos then the depth of what’s new? It is as if all creation is happening in and around you. There is no firm footing, There is no good nor bad. There is no heaven nor hell. There is all of this. What do you do at this time that feels like you are losing your mind? Hang out in the company of the holy. The people that are truly whole. The ones that don’t preach but teach and share. Go to holy sacred places to recharge yourself. Know what elements earth, water, fire, air,(wind) are the most healing for you and then go seek it out so it can cleanse you. Even a candle or bath or smelling flowers or trees will help.

This is a year for sacred retreats. This is the year to join me in Peru before Machu Picchu closes to the public for some undetermined period of time. Stay tuned for this retreat Nov 19th to 27th. There are so many more powerful places that we will visit. This may be my list trip so come with me. It is so deeply rejuvenating for God Sit in those mountains very thinly veiled.

Is it true that if you don’t have sex regularly you will dry up? There is this myth going round, even prevalent in the medical community, that if you don’t use it your lose it. I am going to address this since it seems to be in the news of late when a very prominent person in the fashion industry just revealed what some might think a very long (29 yrs) celibate streak.

There are many reasons for celibacy. Some people embrace it because they had a very bad sexual experience. Some for spiritual reasons decided to use their sexual energy elsewhere. Some because an appropriate partner never showed up. Some to just see what would happen, an experiment, tried this path. So everything from curiosity, to energy, to fear, and more. There is not one reason I can speak of this as an authority since I was celibate for 17 years. Partially because no appropriate partner materialized but mostly a spiritual quest to see if meditation got deeper because of celibacy. I wanted to know what would happen and then it just kept going. I will say I didn’t notice that my meditations got deeper, but taking the break I came back to making love from a very different place. It is a meditation to me now.

Let’s face it relationships take time, but they are also a direct path to the Divine if we allow them to be so. They can become a walking awake meditation. Celibacy is not a medal nor a badge of honor in or of itself. If you are called to try it for a period to understand and not to judge it as good or bad or right or wrong then go into it consciously and embrace making love with the Divine.

We think of Sex in toooo limited of terms anyway. We think that a threesome is a walk on the wild side. What about making love with God? Embrace having sex with the entire Universe. Make love with each breath. Make each person you meet your lover. Get over the limitations. Become the best lover ever in the comfort of every room, environment, every breath that you can find the capacity to be the lover of that moment. Become the world’s greatest lover for real.